Manufacturing jobs are very different from Genius Bar jobs. Aren't 99% of the apps in the store free?

The starting pay for a UPS driver is $73,000+ after working for the company for several years in other parts of the company. Apple shipments are probably a drop in the bucket of what those people deliver.

This claim by Apple might be accurate in one aspect but it is essentially a smokescreen of BS for lack of manufacturing jobs in the USA.

It a shame that people in tech don't think of the little guy/gal. Apple has a lot of retail stores full of glass. Who do you think keeps them clean? And clean they are. Plenty of Janitors, Window Cleaners, Maintenance Men, and the list is larger than you would imagine.

And clean they are... Just not as clean as the pr machine would like it...

I think it's safe to say that if from the impetus of apples' "report" we ended up talking about window cleaners because of apple's glass design cues then the story was indeed rubbish...

....it has however made me think a lot about my contribution to the economy and all the job opportunities I have created mostly unbeknonst to me by virtue of my car usage (garages, car mechanics, car manufacturers), occasional bar fights (farmers, alcohol distillers, bouncers, coppers, lawyers, judges), computer misusage (repairmen, apple, computer manufacturers, ups, computer shops) and occasional clumsiness with various stains and spills in clothing (washing machine manufacturers, detergent manufacturers, sweatshops, clothes manufacturers, shops)... Feels good to that my shit is offering so much work for people around me, I feel wam and fuzzy in a very self righteous way inside me, it's good to create job opportunities.

That all depends on how narrow-minded and bigoted your definition of humanity is. Obviously, you only consider white, Anglo-Saxon Americans as part of humanity.

For most of the employees in China who are working indirectly for Apple, that job is a matter of life or death for them and their families. Or, at the very least, it's the difference between a nice office job that hundreds of thousands of people want or a backbreaking job in the fields that everyone is trying to get away from.

If you get off your high horse, Apple's doing a great deal for humanity in China.

The point I was making was beyond Apple, beyond the US, beyond anywhere...

Also I'm a Black man...I'd be damned if I didn't consider myself or my family humans.

edit: Addition...let's say that Apple is projected to pull in 50B profit in 2012...they pull in 25B PROFIT instead...their stock drops, the haters (slapppy) say Apple is doomed...etc, etc, etc...Business is not only designed to make a profit, that's fine, business is designed to increase profits at almost all costs.

And clean they are... Just not as clean as the pr machine would like it...

I think it's safe to say that if from the impetus of apples' "report" we ended up talking about window cleaners because of apple's glass design cues then the story was indeed rubbish...

....it has however made me think a lot about my contribution to the economy and all the job opportunities I have created mostly unbeknonst to me by virtue of my car usage (garages, car mechanics, car manufacturers), occasional bar fights (farmers, alcohol distillers, bouncers, coppers, lawyers, judges), computer misusage (repairmen, apple, computer manufacturers, ups, computer shops) and occasional clumsiness with various stains and spills in clothing (washing machine manufacturers, detergent manufacturers, sweatshops, clothes manufacturers, shops)... Feels good to that my shit is offering so much work for people around me, I feel wam and fuzzy in a very self righteous way inside me, it's good to create job opportunities.

I believed in the free market years ago. It doesn't exist in the USA. Why, because bribery and influence pedaling are rampant in every part of the US government and state governments. Corporations give campaign contributions for favors. Those favors come back as regulations or taxes that prevent competitors from entering markets to compete with existing companies. They also include special tax breaks that aren't available to other companies.

I honestly don't know when the USA last had a free market or if it ever did.

Think about this...

Thousands of years and human history and it we finally get a Standard Oil. How many times in those thousands of years did an oppressive government arise murder, enslave, and torture its citizens? I think it was a few more times then we wound up with "monopoly" businesses. Of course the government jumped in and offered to do something about it. God knows it should be politicians oppressing us and not the companies.

Most conservatives and progressives agree on what the problem is: corruption. One just blames companies and one blames the government. I just can't see why a person would want to give the government more power and control over their lives, wallets, and freedoms when they have already shown time and time again throughout history that they will screw us royally. In countries where a free market and "mega corporations" do not exists, the people controlling the government are the drug lords, terrorists, and religions nuts. Personally, I'll take the companies. They need me and my money to survive.

Or, ya know, we could do something REALLY crazy like limit the powers of the government. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, as the saying goes. Few people will argue that. So if you agree with that, how is it so hard to believe that limited power limits corruption?

Look at these comments from the Washington Post article.. not a SINGLE positive one. Most refer to the 'slave labor' in China. Are people this fucking stupid? I can understand a percentage of trolling comments not giving credit, but 100% of them? I assume not many kids read the WP, so these are adults? Just an example:

Quote:

OK so because you created over 500,00 jobs in the Us we should feel that what you did in China is OK.
Yeah right thats something you'd expect in "family Guy" or the "Simpsons" but not in real life.
Apple is worth 500 billion and for the price's they charge they should not even need china to manufacture their products in the first place but then again then they could not get away with this slave work force and profits.The most valuable company in the world yeah right at what cost !! No more as in my family we will never support Apple again even if they gave it away for free.

for your labor costs ipads should sell for 99 bucks not 799 so you can't even say your doing it to keep the price down its only because of your greed and anyone buying your products are only supporting a company that has no morals at all. shame on you !!!

Look at these comments from the Washington Post article.. not a SINGLE positive one. Most refer to the 'slave labor' in China. Are people this fucking stupid? I can understand a percentage of trolling comments not giving credit, but 100% of them? I assume not many kids read the WP, so these are adults? Just an example:

Amazing.

It's an insult to the memory of anyone that did suffer as a slave to suggest that one has traveled for days hoping they would get picked to work at factory is somehow a slave. They don't get paid well but neither doesn't anyone in any country for easily had jobs that require no special skill or background. Foxconn hires employees the way my first jobs as a teenage hires me.

What gets me is I think some of these people actually think these people would be better off but are they thinking about the consequences of such actions if this forced Foxconn to hire less people or completely pick and move to another country? Where would that leave all these poor rural workers with no education? Where would this leave the women whose only chance for supporting themselves financially without resorting to prostitution or other illegal actions?

China is rough, these employees were born under less than ideal circumstances, and they don't have a great job but they do have a job and they do have the choice whether to work or not to work. Calling it slavery is ignorant and offensive.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

What gets me is I think some of these people actually think these people would be better off but are they thinking about the consequences of such actions if this forced Foxconn to hire less people or completely pick and move to another country? Where would that leave all these poor rural workers with no education? Where would this leave the women whose only chance for supporting themselves financially without resorting to prostitution or other illegal actions?

Why do you pose these bizarre "solutions"? The answer to poor worker's conditions is to eliminate the jobs completely? Huh?

Here's something that makes a bit more sense: The solution is not to make things worse, but instead, to make things better. Maybe shorten the work week, maybe pay more, maybe otherwise improve the plight of the oppressed? Workplace safety? Dignity? A living wage?

Why do you pose these bizarre "solutions"? The answer to poor worker's conditions is to eliminate the jobs completely? Huh?

Here's something that makes a bit more sense: The solution is not to make things worse, but instead, to make things better. Maybe shorten the work week, maybe pay more, maybe otherwise improve the plight of the oppressed? Workplace safety? Dignity? A living wage?

Geez, whoda thunk it?

In your eagerness to fake moral concern, you miss his point entirely. Emphasis on fake.

And clean they are... Just not as clean as the pr machine would like it...

I think it's safe to say that if from the impetus of apples' "report" we ended up talking about window cleaners because of apple's glass design cues then the story was indeed rubbish...

....it has however made me think a lot about my contribution to the economy and all the job opportunities I have created mostly unbeknonst to me by virtue of my car usage (garages, car mechanics, car manufacturers), occasional bar fights (farmers, alcohol distillers, bouncers, coppers, lawyers, judges), computer misusage (repairmen, apple, computer manufacturers, ups, computer shops) and occasional clumsiness with various stains and spills in clothing (washing machine manufacturers, detergent manufacturers, sweatshops, clothes manufacturers, shops)... Feels good to that my shit is offering so much work for people around me, I feel wam and fuzzy in a very self righteous way inside me, it's good to create job opportunities.

I'd pay extra for Apple products manufactured in the EU, but we're not offered that choice nor ever will be. Even Nokia are moving their manufacturing out of Finland and to China. It's all rather pathetic and leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

I'd pay extra for Apple products manufactured in the EU, but we're not offered that choice nor ever will be. Even Nokia are moving their manufacturing out of Finland and to China. It's all rather pathetic and leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

The cost of manufacturing in China could be a lot higher than some people think. It is not inconceivable that China and the US could get into a military conflict. Unfortunately the US has no ability to manufacture much of anything without electronics from China. Air Force planes won't fly without iPads, from another thread, and the US does not know how to make iPads.

Look at these comments from the Washington Post article.. not a SINGLE positive one. Most refer to the 'slave labor' in China. Are people this fucking stupid? I can understand a percentage of trolling comments not giving credit, but 100% of them? I assume not many kids read the WP, so these are adults? Just an example:

Amazing.

I agree. Sometimes I despair of the level of thinking that most Americans do. Too much faux news for starters, but the bandwagon effect is amazing.

This is one of the reasons I strongly believe Apple has to fight FUD with FUD. People need to hear that there are two sides to the story.

"I'm way over my head when it comes to technical issues like this"Gatorguy 5/31/13

I read through this thread (some good thoughts) but skipped the comments at Washington Post after some minutes.

To be honest I don't get the conceited, double standard posts, hopefully simply based on a lack of knowledge and experience.
Unfortunately the US decided some decades ago to ditch production business in favor of the services sector and financial operations.
A lot of people now complaining were glad to ditch their noisy and dirty production worker life for an office chair.

What the US lost is the necessary infrastructure. It's simply not enough to slap a factory elsewhere and hire some workers.
To ramp up a very well running production line from e.g. 100 units per week to 1000 or even 10000 is nearby rocket science if there's not the necessary infrastructure in place.
You need reliable suppliers able to scale (in best case nearby) , efficient supply chain management, production know how, stable quality management processes, well trained managers, gangers and worker.
In addition you need first class routes of transportation, energy and raw material supply and last but not least straight (not equal to weak!) laws enabling a minimum of efficiency killing bureaucracy.

To reduce the discussion on "cheap labor" is misleading because it's influence on the selling-price is low compared to the total of processing cost, especially at highly optimized production units.

It's pretty interesting that Apple/Foxcon are willing to take the hard route to improve and buildup some necessary infrastructure components for their production units in Brasil.
There are obviously some incentives like tax advantages and trained, but not too expensive production employees, but I there are still a lot of things to improve.
Perhaps there's a chance to learn enough to bring at least some component manufacturing back to the US some day.

What Tim Cook as basically saying is that Apple has created jobs and infrastructure in the US in areas where the US is top like engineering, software and hardware development, customer support, retail etc.

It's absolutely OK to ask Apple to think about ways to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, but it's not OK to demand that they should spent their whole fortune on fixing issues generated by collective negligence of the production sector in the US.
Those 100 billion would just be vaporize like a drop on live coal in a country with more than 14 trillion national dept.

It would help if those two most vocal groups, young guns that apparently never have worked in a factory and old conservatives stuck in the glory of the last century, would get their act together and provide their part to fix the national deficits.

The cost of manufacturing in China could be a lot higher than some people think. It is not inconceivable that China and the US could get into a military conflict. Unfortunately the US has no ability to manufacture much of anything without electronics from China. Air Force planes won't fly without iPads, from another thread, and the US does not know how to make iPads.

The US has never known how to make microelectronics, other than chip fabrication. All mass manufacture of consumer electroncs went to Japan, Korea, China, Singapore, etc. decades ago.

The US never made VCRs, cameras of any quality, video cameras, solid state radios or televisions, most computers and computer parts, LCD screens, and so on. There is no reservoir of expertise here, maybe the most important factor besides parts proximity when anyone contemplates opening a plant.

Steve Jobs could have been a bit misleading when he said "those jobs aren't coming back." They were never in the US to begin with! Yes, Apple manufactured here when the electronics were an order of magnitude less fine, but practically all the large-scale production experience of micromanufacturing is in Asia. Even robot design and manufacturing, I would imagine—correct me if I'm wrong on that.

You anti-union, anti-government memeopaths are missing the point by miles, thousands of miles.

Silicon Valley is where brilliant things are designed and engineered. THIS reservoir of expertise must be protected, appreciated, encouraged, insead of hated. (And hated for the stupidest possible reasons—looking at you dasanman69 and myapplelove).

Is there another phone maker based in the US for you to appreciate? Or computer maker? Or large-scale innovator? No there is not.

Unbelieveable the treachery in this thread, and duplicity. Bitching at Apple because they don't manufacture here. NOBODY can DO the micromanufacuring here. In all the world, only Apple is doing an honest job of ORIGINATING and DESIGNING the products here to be manufactured where they should be, where the expertise is, elsewhere. And that is creating jobs, both here and aound the world. And they're just getting started. A whole lot of money that has been going to Asia is now going to start coming back. They are going to outgrow their new headquarters in five years, just watch.

Better figure out how to meet the Chinese halfway and stop pretending the US is king of the world. We all have our talents. This is what Apple has built its business on, working with people around the world. It's one of their core values, expertly developed by Tim Cook, obviously.

I wish you guys would enlarge your horizons. Your narrow focus, antievolutionary as it is, is what's killing political economics in this country.

I read through this thread (some good thoughts) but skipped the comments at Washington Post after some minutes.

To be honest I don't get the conceited, double standard posts, hopefully simply based on a lack of knowledge and experience.
Unfortunately the US decided some decades ago to ditch production business in favor of the services sector and financial operations.
A lot of people now complaining were glad to ditch their noisy and dirty production worker life for an office chair.

What the US lost is the necessary infrastructure. It's simply not enough to slap a factory elsewhere and hire some workers.
To ramp up a very well running production line from e.g. 100 units per week to 1000 or even 10000 is nearby rocket science if there's not the necessary infrastructure in place.
You need reliable suppliers able to scale (in best case nearby) , efficient supply chain management, production know how, stable quality management processes, well trained managers, gangers and worker.
In addition you need first class routes of transportation, energy and raw material supply and last but not least straight (not equal to weak!) laws enabling a minimum of efficiency killing bureaucracy.

To reduce the discussion on "cheap labor" is misleading because it's influence on the selling-price is low compared to the total of processing cost, especially at highly optimized production units.

It's pretty interesting that Apple/Foxcon are willing to take the hard route to improve and buildup some necessary infrastructure components for their production units in Brasil.
There are obviously some incentives like tax advantages and trained, but not too expensive production employees, but I there are still a lot of things to improve.
Perhaps there's a chance to learn enough to bring at least some component manufacturing back to the US some day.

What Tim Cook as basically saying is that Apple has created jobs and infrastructure in the US in areas where the US is top like engineering, software and hardware development, customer support, retail etc.

It's absolutely OK to ask Apple to think about ways to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, but it's not OK to demand that they should spent their whole fortune on fixing issues generated by collective negligence of the production sector in the US.
Those 100 billion would just be vaporize like a drop on live coal in a country with more than 14 trillion national dept.

It would help if those two most vocal groups, young guns that apparently never have worked in a factory and old conservatives stuck in the glory of the last century, would get their act together and provide their part to fix the national deficits.

Well said. What people don't realize is that even if Apple were able to afford the labor costs (or were able to have a fully automated lights out factory), it wouldn't solve anything. US manufacturing is at a huge disadvantage due to:
- Labor laws (even in a lights-out factory, there are employees)
- Liability laws
- Health, safety, and environment laws
- Administrative overhead
- Tax policies
- And so on
And that doesn't even get into the fact that, as you point out, the infrastructure is gone. Apple can't single-handedly rebuild the infrastructure of the U.S.
It also fails to consider that Apple is a global company. It is not unreasonable for their supply chain to be global, as well.

"I'm way over my head when it comes to technical issues like this"Gatorguy 5/31/13

Very few Americans would want those repetitive and boring manufacturing jobs Apple shipped to China..

Is that a fact now. Well contrary to popular mythology, Americans aren't lazy and generally never have been. I think what you mean is that Americans can't afford to work at the Chinese equivalent of slave labor wages with the US cost of living.

Jobs' comment that 'those jobs aren't coming back" seems to have been saying "As CEO I will place shareholder profits above American manufacturing jobs." It has to be one of the least imaginative statements the man ever said. The government in the US is weak about these things and should tie corporate tax rates to the numbers of jobs these companies create overseas to make it in their interest to create and keep those jobs at home. After all each job shipped 'over there' is a source of tax the government loses 'over here'. Even the most right wing hawk will have to admit that without a tax base you simply can't afford to go to war.

Well said. What people don't realize is that even if Apple were able to afford the labor costs (or were able to have a fully automated lights out factory), it wouldn't solve anything. US manufacturing is at a huge disadvantage due to:
- Labor laws (even in a lights-out factory, there are employees)
- Liability laws
- Health, safety, and environment laws
- Administrative overhead
- Tax policies
- And so on
And that doesn't even get into the fact that, as you point out, the infrastructure is gone. Apple can't single-handedly rebuild the infrastructure of the U.S.
It also fails to consider that Apple is a global company. It is not unreasonable for their supply chain to be global, as well.

I agree, but I want to relativize two of your points.

- Health, safety, and environment laws

Apple has improved these points a lot in the past e.g. by banning toxic substances and cutting overtimes. Their might be a chance in the future to fulfill reasonable adjusted laws in the US without the need to ditch necessary standards.

- Labor laws

I'm not convinced that this point is a show-stopper. I have seen great collaboration with workers' representations at companies in countries with much stronger labor laws.
It's all about productivity and productivity not necessarily implies abuse.

It's an insult to the memory of anyone that did suffer as a slave to suggest that one has traveled for days hoping they would get picked to work at factory is somehow a slave. They don't get paid well but neither doesn't anyone in any country for easily had jobs that require no special skill or background. Foxconn hires employees the way my first jobs as a teenage hires me..

Uh, no not really. Slaves got a roof over their heads and had very little else to show for their 14 hours a day at the end of a month. They were beaten or even killed if they tried to organize other slaves to change things. The fact that unions are basically illegal in China - and that people are jailed, beaten and also killed for trying to press for worker's rights there - levels your comparison of Chinese labor with that of unionized workers in the west (who are (*were*) often far from unskilled). The only difference is that in China they're "free" to quit and go take another job under the exact same conditions and with the exact same lack of protection. You need to factor in poverty and what that can make people do to put food in their bellies - crazy things like travel for days in the hope of getting picked to work in a dead-end factory job so they too can get a roof over their heads, also without much more to show for it at the end of the month.

The US has never known how to make microelectronics, other than chip fabrication. All mass manufacture of consumer electroncs went to Japan, Korea, China, Singapore, etc. decades ago.

Japan, Korea etc are not a military threat. China is huge and can produce everything faster and without any outside resources unlike the US which can't even protect their borders from illegal immigrants let alone agree on any sort of coherent foreign policy. China is not encumbered by any such bureaucratic red tape and could become the premminet world power within the next decade.

If you don't find that a bit disconcerting then you are totally in denial. Loss of high tech manufacturing in the US, whenever it began, is a very dangerous situation.

Japan, Korea etc are not a military threat. China is huge and can produce everything faster and without any outside resources unlike the US which can't even protect their borders from illegal immigrants let alone agree any sort of coherent foreign policy. China is not encumbered by any such bureaucratic red tape and could become the premminet world power within the next decade.

If you don't find that a bit disconcerting then you are totally in denial. Loss of high tech manufacturing in the US, whenever it began, is a very dangerous situation.

You said it. We've got our share of blood on our hands in this country but do we really want to give yet more superpower status to the butchers of Tibet?

If you don't find that a bit disconcerting then you are totally in denial. Loss of high tech manufacturing in the US, whenever it began, is a very dangerous situation.

Nah, it's more about that I don't live in Orange County. It's one world now, my brother.

Actually, I know guy in L.A., in Echo Park, who would agree with you. Ya gotta think big and think progressive. Business interdependence will do more to prevent war than all the nationalist paranoia you can muster up. The Chinese can be liberalized, humanized, cooperatized. Even Americans can learn to live as citizens of the world—maybe.

Seriously, though, there is a wild card in the deck. The most ubiquitous piece of technology ever has yet to appear, yet to come out of Apple. It may well be manufactured here, because the technology is new enough that the production might as well be done here as anywhere. I am referring to wearable screens, as in glasses. To repeat, it will be huger than anything yet to appear.

Nah, it's more about that I don't live in Orange County. It's one world now, my brother.

Actually, I know guy in L.A., in Echo Park, who would agree with you. Ya gotta think big and think progressive. Business interdependence will do more to prevent war than all the nationalist paranoia you can muster up. The Chinese can be liberalized, humanized, cooperatized. Even Americans can learn to live as citizens of the worldmaybe.

Beat those swords to ploughshares. Peace and love my brother.

Ever wonder why it has never worked out in all of history.
Because that just isn't the way the animal kingdom works.

Ever wonder why it has never worked out in all of history.
Because that just isn't the way the animal kingdom works.

Aha, you've fallen into my hands.

As T.H. Huxley said about the Rev. what's-his-name in the debate over Darwin. Only he said "God hath delivered him into my hands." But I don't think God belongs in this context, but in another, the following.

War on an organized scale belongs to relatively recent humans, namely the Indo-Europeans from the central Asian steppes. Marija Gimbutas and others have demonstrated that there were several thousand years of civilization in the Mediterranean and the river valleys of Europe where weapon making for the purpose of murder—war—was unknown. Thousands of years of highly evolved village and town life were lived on a cooperative, non-dominative basis.

The Indo-Europeans first hunted the horse, then became the first to tame and ride them. They used this new "skill" as a raiding technique on the settled communities of Old Europe—Gimbutas's term for the previous, forgotten civilization. Being nomadic, they invented the wheel to haul their goods, and then came up with the war chariot. They were unstoppable, and they took over from India to Iran to Anatolia, Greece, all of Europe including Britain, as Celts and Anglo-Saxons.

We still live under their warlike mandate. It did not exist before as an organized ethos. Cooperation did.

Further reading: any of Gimbutas's books, Anthony's Horse, Wheel and Language, Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade (a bit sappy but true), James Melaart Earliest Civilizations of the Near East.

Not a well-known line of thought, in fact suppressed by male-dominant mythology in both archeology and anthropology. Check it out, if you dare to risk your presuppositions.

Humans are wired for cooperation and empathy. Ever traveled and met strangers?

I almost forgot the God part. It was the I-Es who invented the remote mountain-storm-war patriarch-god to support their own patriarchal ways. Abraham got infected with this idea when he was living near the Mitanni and the Hittites. See Merlin Stone, The Paradise Papers/When God Was a Woman—"Was Yahweh Indo-European?" or something like that.

Uh, no not really. Slaves got a roof over their heads and had very little else to show for their 14 hours a day at the end of a month. They were beaten or even killed if they tried to organize other slaves to change things. The fact that unions are basically illegal in China - and that people are jailed, beaten and also killed for trying to press for worker's rights there - levels your comparison of Chinese labor with that of unionized workers in the west (who are (*were*) often far from unskilled). The only difference is that in China they're "free" to quit and go take another job under the exact same conditions and with the exact same lack of protection. You need to factor in poverty and what that can make people do to put food in their bellies - crazy things like travel for days in the hope of getting picked to work in a dead-end factory job so they too can get a roof over their heads, also without much more to show for it at the end of the month.

You apparently don't know jack about slavery. Slaves didn't organize to "change" things. Slaves had to organize to escape because slavery was the law of the land so there was no way TO change anything. The change in laws was left to white abolitionists and the few freed persons around. Also, having the choice between low paying jobs is a hell of a lot different than having ZERO choice and having members of your family sold off to other areas of the country. And let's not forget rape and forced breeding. Also, as far as I know, it is not illegal for these Chinese workers to learn to read or go in public without foxconn's permission.

The US has never known how to make microelectronics, other than chip fabrication. All mass manufacture of consumer electroncs went to Japan, Korea, China, Singapore, etc. decades ago.

The US never made VCRs, cameras of any quality, video cameras, solid state radios or televisions, most computers and computer parts, LCD screens, and so on. There is no reservoir of expertise here, maybe the most important factor besides parts proximity when anyone contemplates opening a plant.

Steve Jobs could have been a bit misleading when he said "those jobs aren't coming back." They were never in the US to begin with! Yes, Apple manufactured here when the electronics were an order of magnitude less fine, but practically all the large-scale production experience of micromanufacturing is in Asia. Even robot design and manufacturing, I would imaginecorrect me if I'm wrong on that.

You anti-union, anti-government memeopaths are missing the point by miles, thousands of miles.

Silicon Valley is where brilliant things are designed and engineered. THIS reservoir of expertise must be protected, appreciated, encouraged, insead of hated. (And hated for the stupidest possible reasonslooking at you dasanman69 and myapplelove).

Is there another phone maker based in the US for you to appreciate? Or computer maker? Or large-scale innovator? No there is not.

Unbelieveable the treachery in this thread, and duplicity. Bitching at Apple because they don't manufacture here. NOBODY can DO the micromanufacuring here. In all the world, only Apple is doing an honest job of ORIGINATING and DESIGNING the products here to be manufactured where they should be, where the expertise is, elsewhere. And that is creating jobs, both here and aound the world. And they're just getting started. A whole lot of money that has been going to Asia is now going to start coming back. They are going to outgrow their new headquarters in five years, just watch.

Better figure out how to meet the Chinese halfway and stop pretending the US is king of the world. We all have our talents. This is what Apple has built its business on, working with people around the world. It's one of their core values, expertly developed by Tim Cook, obviously.

I wish you guys would enlarge your horizons. Your narrow focus, antievolutionary as it is, is what's killing political economics in this country.

Where did I say I hate Apple? Because I'm critical of their boasting does not equate hatred. I do not think Apple set out to hurt other industries.

I'm not in the "Apple should bring manufacturing here" boat, we've transitioned to a service economy.

Ok, you're siding with the haters by taking a blindingly anti-Apple view:"how many jobs has Apple killed?"

How many jobs have computers killed? How many jobs did John Deere kill? Steam engines?

When a technological revolution happens, like when the Japanese figured out how to make more reasonable cars for new energy conditions and the Americans did not, there are displacements. But then the Japanese build factories in the US and then begin to "boast," as you put it, about how many jobs they've created in rural Tennessee or wherever. Do you think anyone but Toyota will talk about that, take their side?

If the New York Times now finds it can sell more eyeballs by attacking Apple, who is going to investigate the massive effect Apple is having on the US economy?

They are going to have to stick up for themselves, just like Toyota did.

But you took an insanely anti-evolutionary position, just to make a point that their self-defense is unseemly to you.

Actually, I agree that they should have left out the part about the delivery jobs. Too satirizable.

Edit: By the way, what Apple represents is that the US is an invention, engineering and design economy, not a service economy. It is no accident that Jonathon Ive and all those engineers from around the world are in Silicon Valley. It is the world center for applied mind amplification. For now. Not enough people realize it, especially Americans, who are stuck in a weird, insecure self-hatred based on a failure to adapt to global, post-national conditions. Failure to evolve. Apple is one of the entities that gets it, because they are on the leading edge of this evolution, which is why their story is so interesting. They are just geting started in creating a new industry that will have more "mindshare" than any previous industry in history. It is going to incur a lot of retrograde fear and loathing among the insecure.

Refusal to evolve is the number one American pathology right now, among certain groups.

Sad to say Hiroshima and Nagasaki - given the context, time, and probable casualty figures for an invasion of mainland Japan 1946-48 - the lesser choice of two evils that may have had no alternative.

But if the US is the butcher of the Americas then China is surely the butcher of east Asia (just ask the Tibetans, Vietnamese, the Disappeared of Tiananmen, etc.). And they Do want to deliver the west a death of a thousand cuts.

You apparently don't know jack about slavery. Slaves didn't organize to "change" things. Slaves had to organize to escape because slavery was the law of the land so there was no way TO change anything. The change in laws was left to white abolitionists and the few freed persons around. Also, having the choice between low paying jobs is a hell of a lot different than having ZERO choice and having members of your family sold off to other areas of the country. And let's not forget rape and forced breeding. Also, as far as I know, it is not illegal for these Chinese workers to learn to read or go in public without foxconn's permission.

But it IS highly illegal for them to write the things that count - matter of fact that treasonous offense can get you put to work in a prison too. Or - haha -are you really that ignorant that you believe the Chinese have changed THAT much since the Cultural Revolution? Have you ever even been there, worked there? Tell you what, go live and work in a Chinese factory, or better yet, a Chinese prison factory for ten years (ha! you want to talk about being "sold off") - then if you survive the beatings and torture you come on back minus your liver and sanity and lecture me on your western definitions of "slavery". Or go try and have this very discussion on in a Chinese Internet chat room (or even better - write a letter to the editor of the People's Daily), and see how you like them apples. If you're still not convinced that slavery exists in "free market 'wage''based economies may I suggest you take a little excursion to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia so that you may witness it in action. Talk to a Bengali agricultural worker or an Indonesian maid and you might just learn that freedom of choice to work for s*it or feces isn't a "choice" at all. Come back when you've seen a bit more of the real ways of the world, son.

Sad to say Hiroshima and Nagasaki - given the context, time, and probable casualty figures for an invasion of mainland Japan 1946-48 - the lesser choice of two evils that may have had no alternative.

But if the US is the butcher of the Americas then China is surely the butcher of east Asia (just ask the Tibetans, Vietnamese, the Disappeared of Tiananmen, etc.). And they Do want to deliver the west a death of a thousand cuts.

Speaking of Viet Nam, and add Laos and Cambodia, the US has a lot of carpet bombing and biocide with Agent Orange to live down.

The point should be that calling the nation you want to work with a butcher is no way to open understanding and improvement of civilized relations.

I said the number one American pathology right now is the refusal to evolve. You make me realize that the refusal is based on an inability to recognize progress. You would rather froth away in what you probably think of as "realism" than see working with the Chinese as mutually beneficial for both nations to rise above their sorry past and present "butchery."

Apple would get nowhere with your attitude. China is helping the US and Apple is helping China. Beginning of a long story.